Making Healthy Families: A Guide for Spouses, Parents and Stepparents (making healthy families series)

"Making Healthy Families" explains the elements required to make and sustain healthy, functional families. This timely book describes the family life stages, from "Becoming a Couple," to "Becoming Parents," and "Raising Adolescents." It educates parents about the predictable stresses of each transition, and offers guidelines and hands-on exercises for achieving a healthy adjustment in each stage of family life.A chapter on "Trouble-shooting" offers couples an opportunity to plot their own predictable stress points on the family journey, thereby allowing them to better master their particular life struggles. The section on "Divorce: Crisis and Transformation" offers advice to parents for helping their children and themselves through trying times. A chapter on "Making Healthy Stepfamilies" provides wisdom about the stages of stepfamily development that make remarriage rewarding, helping families avoid the pitfalls that cause over half of second marriages to fail.Learn what makes families work - from structure and communication to family style and characteristics of healthy marital relationships. Cutting edge research is enlivened through real-life questions about marriage, family, and parenting that have been answered by Dr. Peterson on her "Ask Dr. Gayle" column on www.askdrgayle.comEditorial Reviews..Peterson covers all stages of the family unit from becoming a couple to raising teenagers in order to help parents understand and efficiently negotiate the normal, varied stages of the family life cycle. Of special value is a chapter on trouble-shooting tips to help parents anticipate their own predictable stress points on the family life cycle. "Making Healthy Families" is highly recommended for parents at all stages of parenthood, marriage and family counselors, as well as students of psychology. -- Wisconsin Book Watch, March 2000...exercises help parents adjust to stages of the family journey, and provide insight into patterns of healthy relationship. -- Educare: Colorado's online news leader, 9 news.com Denver...July 2002